Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Amusing Movie, Terrible Transfer, December 31, 2005
Of all of the Italian sword-and-sandals movies, this has perhaps the silliest premise--in fact, the whole notion of Hercules fighting "moon men" only appeared in the English-dubbed version (the Italian original is about "Maciste," a strongman character in Italian movies back to the 1914 *Cabiria*, and there was nothing about aliens from the moon). It is moderately entertaining, and very low budget, as was typical for these movies. I say moderately entertaining, but only if you like this sort of thing, i.e., cheesy genre movies--if you're looking for another *Casablanca*, this isn't it. Most of the sword and sandals DVDs have very low-quality transfers: they chop up the original widescreen movies with pan-and-scan, and often look like they are using a video camera pointed at a TV screen showing a very faded and scratched print to make the transfer. This particular movie, however, has the worst transfer I have seen yet: few colors besides blue have survived, and there is no sharpness in the image at all. I am checking out the "special edition" DVD of *Moon Men* from somethingweird.com (Something Weird Video), which specializes in this sort of thing--they promise widescreen at least, and a "digitally remastered" version.
I've looked at the Something Weird version, and it is incomparably better (well, the visual quality is, at any rate!)--this is the double feature entitled "Hercules Against the Moon Men/The Witch's Curse" (a mere $17.99 here at amazon.com).
|
|
|
3.0 out of 5 stars
Retromedia version has good technical quality, June 13, 2009
The Retromedia version offers an excellent anamorphic transfer. DVDs for many campy public-domain films look like they're taken from TV prints that have been dragged behind a truck, then run through VHS twice. Retromedia clearly had access to a clean 35mm print and made a modern digital transfer. It looks and sounds far better than expected for this kind of title--about what you'd get from a major studio with honest technicians and a good vault copy. Given the age of the film and the likely budget, we're probably seeing everything there is to see.
|
|
|
2.0 out of 5 stars
The writers were running out of ideas for Herc, February 26, 2008
This is one of the few Hercules movies where the title actually makes sense. There are moon men and Herc does fight them. It's in the last ten minutes of the movie and it's not very exciting or well staged, but at least it fulfills the title. Alan Steel is portraying our buff, intrepid hero this time out. Herc is called to a village where Queen Samara forces her people to sacrifice their children to appease the gods of the mountain which are the titular moon men. They're basically giant rocks come to life. There is a rebellion going on and Hercules tries to help by infiltrating the castle. The moon men tell Queen Samara to kill Herc. She tries and fails several times so changes tactics and uses her secret potion for Herc to fall in love with her. This device of a beautiful woman giving Hercules something to drink that gives her power over him is used in nearly every Hercules movie I've seen. The writers came up with moon men for Herc to fight but couldn't go without the standard drink gag. Hercules Against the Moon men is fairly dull. The title is the wildest thing about it. It's about 90 minutes of people standing around talking with one or two poorly contrived action sequences thrown in.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
